1. Food, especially palm butter and pineapple
2. The fantastic West African music especially “Yori, Yori”.
3. The glorious sunshine that glows like a balloon in the sky at night
4. Shaking hands with everyone and anyone we meet
5. … and doing the African ‘snap’
6. Getting a high five on the way back from Communion
7. People remembering your name
8. People getting your name wrong in a friendly way
9. People looking delighted to see you even though they’ve only seen you once before
10. Patience and Kindness sitting next to each other in class
11. … just behind Comfort
12. Watching football
13. Talking about football
14. The Virtuous Women’s Multipurpose Collective
15. Walking round inside the President’s Palace on an impromptu visit
16. Visiting Guinea without a visa or a passport
17. How beautifully mathematical the Palm trees are as well as all the amazing trees in general
18. Sitting in a gushing waterfall, dancing next to the water fall, drinking Club Beer next to the waterfall and dancing to African Gospel music next to that same waterfall
19. Messages of (Spirit) inspiration… on the bumpers of yellow taxis
20. The warm welcomes
21. The amazing people
22. The tropical fruit (including Solero fruit)
23. People being shy but never embarrassed
24. Everyone wanting to be your friend, including those you shake hands with on the street
25. The spontaneous harmonies that pop up as kids sing in class
26. The silent conversations (with smiles and head nods) with people you pass on the street
27. Putting ‘o’ on the end of words and sentences
28. Being introduced to people with brand new – and sometimes peculiar – names wherever we go
29. Being told by people they heard you on the radio
30. … and they remember what you said
31. Club beer
32. Sugar cane
33. Having our own driver
34. Having these particular drivers – Simeon, Flomo, Jimmy and Bility…
35. Dancing at any given opportunity
36. Teaching Africans to dance
37. Orange Fanta that’s deliciously different to our own Orange Fanta
38. Driving along with the windows open taking in brisk air (and being able to smell lots of different kinds of foods)
39. New sights everywhere we drive
40. People being out and together all of the time, day and night
41. Seeing wild fires at the side of the road
42. Beesie the dog and his fox-like friend
43. The massive “No Lemon” sign marking the garage which indicates that they don’t sell lemons
44. Bizarre Liberian advertising and billboards
45. The fact that people still say Happy New Year to you, even though we’re two months into the year…
46. …and also that people still have their Christmas decorations up

The country itself – we’ll never forget our first trip to Africa

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The biggest complaint in all the police stations we visited was lack of funding for transport and basic furnishings. The policemen often don’t have enough money to hire a motorcycle taxi to go to crime scenes, and one policeman apologised that they didn’t have enough chairs in the station for us all to sit on. There were five of us.

But he was proud of the businesslike way they had developed their own police jargon – ‘Romeo,’ he told us, was code for ‘rape’. There are so many people hanging around police stations that they don’t like to broadcast the news if there is an accusation of rape.

In our first week, we came to a police station with three little boys – aged nine, ten and 12 – in the Women and Children’s Protection Section. “Small Romeo,” said Robert, our Don Bosco Homes guide. “Are you getting me? Small Romeo”. The policeman behind the desk also looked at us knowingly. The charge on the sheet was “corruption of minor”.

One of the boys looked slightly tearful, another blank, and the third – who said he was 12, but looked much younger – seemed excited by this sudden appearance of white people and beamed at us. He was so taken with us when we all left that he forgot his toy car. The policeman called him back and handed it to him as we left.

At Don Bosco’s Savio Village halfway home, Robert gave the three of us a sheet each to fill in with the boys’ details. It was difficult, partly because of the Liberian English, and partly because we were nervous about the sensitivity of the case.

Some details emerged: they were on the way to or from the water pump; there was a building nearby; there was a man involved – possible the uncle of one of them.

The next day we were leaving for a week in Gbarnga, but when we returned, we asked what had happened. We heard a confusing story. The three boys had been returned to their families and there was to be no charge brought; the community would deal with the incident. Our first reaction was of outrage: surely this couldn’t be fair?

Robert took us out for a full day following up different cases. The last one was to visit the three in the Small Romeo case. We met the two aged nine and ten in a dingy half-constructed building with a huge hole in the floor that the owner had intended for a cesspit, but which was currently lined with rubbish and dirty water. The father of one boy was in a wheelchair; the other boy’s father carried his baby daughter and answered the official questions stony-faced.

The boys were healthy and apparently happy to be back home, we heard. Both fathers had talked to their boys, and the community witnesses said they were behaving normally. Everything seemed comfortable, but we were all thinking of the seriousness of the case, and wondering if one of these men was the ‘uncle’ in the descriptions we’d heard.

The third boy lived in a house almost on the beach. We walked further into the community, through mazy paths and sudden corners, but he wasn’t there. For a moment, we stepped out of a dark alley and savoured the bright sunlight and the fresh sea air. Word had got to the boy and he came to meet us. He was at his Grandmother’s stall back up the road the way we’d come, and he happily walked us back there.

The same questions followed: Was he healthy? Was he happy? Was there anything to be concerned about? His Granny again seemed content that all was well with the boy: he helped carry the stall – selling vegetables and bottles of locally produced gin – out to the main road in the morning and back in the evening. He washed his own clothes, carried water, and cleaned up in the house.

We took a picture of the three of them before we left – again one looked sheepish, one blank and the third one was smiling happily.

Back in the car, we were burning with questions, so we asked Robert to explain the full story. He told us that the three boys had waylaid a girl on her way to the pump and raped her. The ‘uncle’ had caught them. Because they are minors, they can’t be charged, so the best that can be done is for the community – with DBH prompting – to monitor their behaviour and keep them on track as best they can.

“Ah, they are bad boys,” said Robert.

Football atheism in a land of believers:

Here in Liberia – in this land where everyone believes in something and literally everyone loves football – you get a similar bemused reaction saying you don’t support a Premiership football team that you would if you said you don’t believe in God. One devout worshipper has even embarked on the hopeless task of trying to convert me: promising to email me once a week on our return to England with reasons to support Arsenal.

Yesterday we went along to the final of the African Cup of Nations at the Relda Cinema: a dark cavernous shell of a building that was almost destroyed during the war – everything was looted from inside, including the entire upstairs. All that is left are the red theatre-style seats, most of which don’t fold up, some of which have the springs poking through, and here and there, there is no seat at all. To our surprise there were two games projected onto the huge back wall: the final between Ghana and Egypt and a game between Arsenal and Manchester United.

As people with little to no interest in football, to Michael and I it was like watching a load of brightly coloured ants running around a billiard table. I’d sooner have turned my chair around and watched the audience, who broke up the tediousness with constant screams of support and excitement.

Surprisingly everyone’s attention seemed to be on the English Premiership match rather than the African final: there’s globalisation for you! When there was nothing much happening a man a few seats down simply stood up and shouted delightedly at the screen: “Football, Football!” The enthusiasm of everyone here hasn’t quite succeeded in breaking through my own indifference to the game but I have been impressed to see what a unifying and motivating force football is in Liberia.

I don’t know if there was an official statement released to this effect, but everyone tells you that football in Liberia is “a unifying force”. During our stay, the County Meet – a football tournament between Liberia’s 15 counties – came to a climax, and the final was to be contested between Nimba and Grand Gedeh counties – the two main antagonists in the county’s 14-year civil crisis. Nimba won 2-0, but there was no crowd trouble: county officials shook hands on the pitch before and after the game and fans joined together in one big post-match party. Unlike our Premier League’s over-paid stars, professional footballers in Liberia earn around $40 Liberian per game, so anyone playing football at any level in Liberia can only leave the country to be a success.

Teku Nahn, who toured the UK with the Millennium Stars football team as a teenager in 1999, was top scorer in Liberia with 16 goals before Christmas last year. Callers to radio phone-ins clamoured for his inclusion in the national team. He was invited for a three-month try-out with Cape Town FC in South Africa, which he thinks went very well. He scored in his first game and impressed the coaching staff with his skills and hard work. Now he is waiting for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa to be over before finding out whether they will offer him a contract.

If Teku makes it to South Africa it will be a success for the whole Millennium Stars club – a narrow bridge to success that others may be able to follow him across. For those left behind, the focus is shifting from their own dreams to the dreams of others. Now in their fourteenth year – they are engaged in a consultation with team members to transform the football club into a community organisation to be role models to local children and help them develop their talents in music, singing, sport, and especially football.

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